Blues and Bliss: The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke

By George Elliott Clarke

Blues singer, preacher, cultural critic, exile, Africadian, high modernist, spoken word artist, Canadian poet—these are but some of the voices of George Elliott Clarke. In a selection of Clarke’s best work from his early poetry to his most recent, Blues and Bliss: The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke offers readers an impressive cross-section of those voices. Jon Paul Fiorentino’s introduction focuses on this polyphony, his influences—Derek Walcott, Amiri Baraka, and the canon of literary English from Shakespeare to Yeats—and his “voice throwing,” and shows how the intersections here produce a “troubling” of language. He sketches Clarke’s primary interest in the negotiation of cultural space through adherence to and revision of tradition and on the finding of a vernacular that begins in exile, especially exile in relation to African-Canadian communities.

In the afterword, Clarke, in an interesting re-spin of Fiorentino’s introduction, writes with patented gusto about how his experiences have contributed to multiple sounds and forms in his work. Decrying any grandiose notions of theory, he presents himself as primarily a songwriter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Release date: Nov 17, 2008
• ISBN: 9781554582341

George Elliott Clarke

George Elliott Clarke’s books include George & Rue, winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; Execution Poems, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry; and Whylah Falls, winner of the Archibald Lampman Award for poetry and chosen for CBC’s inaugural Canada Reads competition. In 2008, he was appointed to the Order of Canada at the rank of Officer. He was recently the Poet Laureate of Toronto, from 2012 to 2015, and currently teaches at the University of Toronto.

Reviews for Blues and Bliss

[roselyne-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The use of language, and the emphasis of individual words throughout this volume is absolutely amazing. The poet speaks with a very unique voice, and skillfully weaves together images and feelings to create haunting poems.